Friends and family sift through debris at the home of Daniel Wassom after his house was destroyed by a tornado, Monday, April 28, 2014, in Vilonia, Ark. Wassom died in the tornado trying to shield a family member. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

FERNDALE, Ark. (AP) — A fierce tornado that swept through Arkansas killed more than a dozen people, including two sisters and their father, part of a large family that had gathered for a “normal” evening before the storm drove them to seek shelter under a staircase.

“You could just see the wind was just crazy,” Emily Tittle, 17, said Monday as she searched for keepsakes in the ruins of her family’s rural home west of Little Rock.

Tittle said she, her eight siblings and her parents scurried for safety under the stairs in the two-story house, but only half of them made it before the walls were obliterated by the twister. Her father, Rob Tittle, and two sisters, Tori, 20, and Rebekah, 14, were killed. All six of her other siblings were taken to hospitals, three of whom have since been released.

She said her mother is alive, but that she hasn’t heard from her since the night before.

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Daniel Wassom was huddled in a hallway of a Vilonia home during the storm with his wife, Suzanne, and daughters Lorelei, 5, and Sydney, 7, neighbors and a relative said. Suzanne Wassom even posted on Facebook about it. At the height of the tornado, a large piece of lumber crashed toward the family. Dan Wassom, 31, who served in the Air Force, shielded Lorelei, taking the brunt of the blow to his neck, said Carol Arnett, Dan Wassom’s grandmother.

It was a fatal blow. Lorelei suffered a shoulder injury and was hospitalized. Suzanne Wassom was hospitalized with a concussion, her aunt, Sherry Madden, said.

“Dan always put his family first,” Arnett said, wiping away tears. “They’re just good people. They love God and their children.”

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Daniel and April Smith moved to Vilonia last fall, focusing on the shiny new intermediate school that their two boys could one day attend. On Sunday, their sons, third-grader Cameron Smith and first-grader Tyler Smith, were killed when the tornado destroyed the family’s home.

Daniel and April Smith were seriously injured.

“They found a great house at a reasonable price, and they were looking for schools,” Eric Hancock, a longtime family friend who often baby-sat the boys. “They had just built that new one. It just seemed right.”

Tyler was 7. Hancock said Cameron was 9, though the Faulkner County coroner listed the boy’s age as 8.

Hancock said both boys loved baseball, fishing and God.

Cameron also enjoyed hunting, getting his first crack during deer season last year, Hancock said. Cameron fired at two but missed, his nerves getting the best of him.

Tyler, Hancock said, “was a pistol, with more energy than any 16 people I know.”

“He was just a light in the world,” he said.

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Don Mallory was on the phone with his younger brother, 57-year-old David Mallory, when the storm struck Sunday night.

Don Mallory said he told his brother to get a flashlight and take cover.

“He said, ‘All right.’ That’s the last I heard from him,” Don Mallory told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, adding that a neighbor discovered his brother’s body after the storm destroyed the house in Vilonia.

David Mallory’s prized possession was his brown-and-white 1955 Chevrolet that he only drove on Thursdays, his brother said. The car, which was parked in David Mallory’s garage on Sunday night, was discovered Monday more than 100 yards away, mangled and twisted around a tree.

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An avid Arkansas Razorbacks fan since he could talk, 51-year-old Mark Bradley was one of the first reported fatalities in a deadly twister that touched down in Mayflower and cleared a trailer park on Fortner Drive. Bradley, a divorced man with two children in their 20s, had moved into his trailer with his black dog, Shieba, nearly five weeks ago, according to one of his sisters, Debby Lee Hopkins. Sometimes, Bradley would let a homeless man named James stay to watch a Razorbacks football game with him.

“He’s loved the Hogs since he was able to talk,” Hopkins said Tuesday. “His first words were Mommy, Daddy and Razorbacks. … If he had his dog, some fried chicken and some instant potatoes, he was good. He lived so simply.”